and then i read this...

in light of yesterday's quote...i read this this afternoon while researching for funding for an upcoming conference called Street Level 2009:

Poverty Is More than Lack of Money
By including support services as a fundamental aspect of affordable housing, the regional and municipal homelessness strategies acknowledge that poverty is far more complex than mere low income or net worth. And while they emphasize programs and services, the strategies also explicitly recognize that personal support offered by family and friends is also important. World Vision Canada defines poverty as “a surmountable human condition of deprivation and broken relationships which often threatens human survival and involves unacceptable human suffering, preventing people from fulfilling their God-given potential.” From this statement DeGroot-Maggetti and Siggner (2005) of Citizens for Public Justice elaborate four dimensions of
poverty:

• material deprivation (having)
• social exclusion (relating)
• capabilities deprivation (doing)
• diminished life chances (ultimately being)

At every point along the continuum from emergency shelter to entry-level ownership, best practice affordable housing provides supports in each of these dimensions to assist people in breaking free of personal and systemic forces that bind them in poverty. From a Judeo-Christian perspective, the goal of these supports is to establish shalom, which is nothing less than the well-being and harmonious, equitable interdependency of everyone and everything in a given place. These relational supports include yet go beyond the clinical and professional to involve mutually transforming friendships and social networks. In this way, our vulnerable
neighbours are empowered to discover, develop, and exercise their gifts in the community.

(Solutions to the Crisis of Homelessness and Affordable Housing in Greater Vancouver - a draft paper, 18-9).

neat...something about Vancouver, not Calgary. from city to city, poverty is not merely an economic issue, but also a social/relational issue.

dL